I find myself not sleeping too well the night after after the Friday meal due to waking with leg cramp. But what a nice spacious room it is. And I can read my newly acquired book "Gut" from the vast cellared bookshop opposite Tullie House.. I get up and made myself a cup of tea and eat the hotel bedroom biscuit. That is enough for breakfast! I set off for Tullie House 300 m away, but call in at the Cathedral 150m away first. - Really blessed with this central location!
Carlisle Cathedral has been on the radio this previous week - as part of a competition to vote for the best Stained Glass Window out of a choice of the top twelve windows of English Cathedrals. So I am curious to see inside.
The choir stalls are in the centre of the cathedral, and a guide is showing a lady the misericords.. we then go round to the side and he draws open a very tall curtain to reveal a huge panel of pictures showing the life of St Augustine (The Cathedral was built as an Augustinian Priory in 1133 )
Then under an arch, along a short stretch of Abbey Street and though the gate into Tullie House Gardens. The air was filled with thte fragrance of sweet smelling white flowers.. some sort of "Sweet Box", Sarcococca sp pictured here looking back towards the gate
The conference is about to start. President Fay Newbery is at the front:- "Another Amazing Year" she says.
Various committee members present reports. We vote for committee members. We vote for trustees on council - two restanding ones and two new ones.
Mary Steer (right in the picture below) becomes our new president.
Then Mary has a new task - to present the Ursula Duncan Award. Ursula Duncan wrote the standard British "Lichen text /key" published in 1970 with black and white line drawings. The BLS gives an award in her name to people who have contributed to lichenology . I remember at the first BLS AGM I attended over 10 years ago it was given to Ishpi Blatchley for her work in surveying churchyards. We had had to keep it quiet from her that she would be receiving it.
As Mary started talking about the LCIG groups and the LABS groups.. and how many Zoom sessions we had held over the past five years since October 2020, it suddenly dawned on me who was getting it this year.
Then it was lunch time. I ate in the Tullie cafe and sat with Sue and Les Knight and Allan Pentecost and met lots of other people. Then a quick glace at the displays again
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Joseph Halda from the Czech Republic had brought
some of the beautiful ceramic models that he makes.
In the foreground is Dibaeis baeomyces |
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| Looking at the poster display |
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In the tea break I photographed the Acarospora smaragdula
on the Tullie House wall next to the gate on Abbey Street. |
We had talks including one by Les Knight on crusts on walls in Swaledale, and one by James Paton on crusts on his door steps in Edinburgh
We had to pack up by 5pm to let the Tullie House staff clean up the building.
I walked with Lesley from Otley and Allan Pentecost towards the station, as they had trains to catch. All the cafes and bars were noisy and heaving with people. So we went to the station and bought drinks at the Smiths shop there and drank them at the picnic table on the platform.
Then I returned to the hotel and found two groups, later three who had retreated to the hotel restaurant - having found Carlisle too busy on an early Saturday evening.
Then, anticipating the field work on the Sunday at the cemetery I decided an early night was called for... And I slept well.
